
BY WILLIAM J- 
LAT^PTOTM 




Class _JPS3jr^3_ 
GopightN" ..i.lQi2. 

COP^-RIGHT DEPOSIT. 



THE 

CONFESSIONS 

OF A 

HUSBAND 



t ■> 1 1 



BY 
WILLIAM J. LAMPTON 

Author o! "Yawps," etc etc. 

Being a slight offset to " The Confessions 
of a Wife," by Mary Adams 




CAMERON, BLAKE & CO. 

PUBLISHERS 

70 FIFTH AVE., NEW YORK 



lqo3 



THE LiBhVRYOF "| 
CONGRESS, ' 

Two'Copies Receiver j 

JUN 22 1903 ' 



Copyright, 1903, 

BY 

CAMERON, BLAKE & CO. 



Published May, 1903. 






TO "MARY ADAMS," 

The Inspiration of it, this volume of Hectic 
Hallucinations is firmly but respect- 
fully Dedicated. 



PREFACE 

Precious articles are done up in 
small packages. Price fifty cents. 

Marry early and often. 

A new wife sweeps clean. 

Home is where the wife is. 

Kind wives can never die. 

Marriage is the spice of life. 

Money makes the married go. 

Marriage is the grand leveller. 

A widow's weeds blossom early. 

Make the best of a bad husband. 

There is no wife without a thorn. 

All is not matrimony that glitters. 

Husbands propose, wives dispose. 

It is not all of life to get married. 

A wise husban ^ has a good 
ory. 

Better bend a husband than break 
him. 

Reading maketh a full man. Get 
full. 

Some husbands are too good to be 
true. 

Marry in haste to repent in Da- 
kota. 

Be wives to-day; 'tis maidness to 
defer. 

The Lord loveth a cheerful hus- 
band. 



Preface* 

It takes two to make a happy mar- 
riage. 

Husbands always come home to 
roost. 

When the wife is in, the husband 
is out. 

Don't look a gift husband in the 
mouth. 

A guilty husband needs several ac- 
cusers. 

Husbands make the wives grow 
fonder. 

A husband confessed is half re- 
dressed. 

A husband's pockets are a wife's 
pickings. 

There are tricks in all husbands 
•but ours. 

It's a wise wife knoweth her own 
husband. 

When the cat's away, the husband 
will play. 

An idle husband is the devil's 
work-shop. 

It is easy to teach an old husband 
new tricks. 

If husbands were horses, wives 
would ride. 

A little husband husbandeth the 
whole lump. 

An honest husband is the noblest 
work of God. 



\'i 



Preface. 

Marriage comes high, but we 
must have it. 

Morbid communications corrupt 
good feelings. 

Every wife is the architect of her 
own husband. 

When you do not know what else 
to do — marry. 

A husband with a night-key is 
above suspicion. 

Husbands learn in suffering what 
they tell in song. 

A wife must be bitter that a smile 
T\dll not sweeten. 

When wives are ignorant, 'tis folly 
to make them wise. 

He, that reckons without his wife, 
must reckon again. 

A husband in the house is worth 
two in a highballery. 

Don't put off till to-morrow what 
you can marry to-day. 

Two heads are better than one, 
even if one is a husband's. 

Every wife is occasionally what 
she ought to be perpetually. 

If you would know the value of a 
husband, try to borrow one. 

The way to a husband's heart 
isn't through his pocketbook. 

Matrimony doth shape our ends 
rough hew them how we will. 



VJI 



Preface* 

The hand that smooths a husband 
is the hand that rules the roost. 

Take care of the husbands and the 
wives will take care of themselves. 

Look not upon the wine when it 
is red in the cup. Try a Scotch 
highball. 

If a husband and a half cost a for- 
tune and a half, what will one hus- 
band cost? 

It is a thousand times easier to 
marry a new wife than to get rid of 
an old one. 

The lives of some men remind us 
we can make our own sublime by 
being different. 

THE AUTHOR. 



THE CONFESSIONS 
OF A HUSBAND. 



CHAPTER I. 

The night is wild and wet. 

If it were tame and dry I do not 
think I would love it so. All my 
nights since I have been married 
have been tame and dry. They have 
the dignity that belongs to ugliness 
and character, but I think I would 
prefer less ugliness and less charac- 
ter. At least, for two or three nights 
during the year. 

I have never loved anything that 
was not beautiful. I have endured 
a good deal, but endurance is not 
love, although love may be endur- 
ance. I know a few instances that 
nothing on earth but love could 
stand. 

To-day I found something which 
pleased me„ It was a two-dollar bill 
9 



The Confessions 

in my pants pocket. I wonder how 
it escaped my wife when she went 
through my clothes last night. She 
never did that before. Can it be that 
her devotion to me is growing weak 
and wobbly? 

I know two things in this world 
that never, never tire me, and always 
rest me — I wonder if they always 
will. One is a highball, and the oth- 
er is the same. 

Oh, that wind! It roars like a 
fierce elemental creature that doesn't 
know what it wants. I am not like 
the wind. I know what I want and 
I want it badly. I want to be like 
this night is. It is not dry, as I am. 
I can't help feeling that if I opened 
the window and let myself out the 
storm would be kind to me and I, 
should be upborne and transported 
to a cosy little place around the 
corner where the highballs blossom 
all the year round. 

Mary is sure not to miss me. She 
thinks I will not dare. The next 
best thing to jumping out of the 
window is to sneak out of the front 

to 



Of a Husband. 

door. Mary is busy with the Sister- 
hood of Sociologic Progress meeting 
in our sitting room this evening. 
The storm is growing gloriously 
worse. So am I. I believe I'll go. 
Sic semper tyrannis. 



it 



The Confessions 



CHAPTER II. 

I WENT. I took a highball. Oh, 
I didn't care what anybody thought 
of me. What's the sense in being 
alive if you can't hurl away other 
people's thoughts and respect your 
own? 

I took another highball. The 
worst thing I ever did in my life I've 
done to-night. That is to say, Mary 
would think so. I'm glad that wo- 
man doesn't know it. But she will 
find out. I know she will. But 
what do I care? 

I took another highball. I believe 
the highball soul got me as the water 
soul took Undine when nobody ex- 
pected it. It stormed as if the skies 
were breaking up and coming to 
pieces on the earth and burying it 
under. You might think they were 
ashamed to see it. 

I took two more highballs. Who 
knows what I should have done with- 
i2 



Of a Husband* 

out them? Six hours ago I had 
never done anything very special — 
anyway, since I've been married — 
that I wouldn't be willing to have 
my wife know. I wonder what she'd 
say now? But I don't see that there 
is any particular need of her know- 
ing. I hate to worry Mary. The 
wind had worked its temper to a hur- 
ricane, and, oh! but I loved it, I 
loved it. 

I took several more highballs. I 
loved them, too. And I began to 
sing. I sang opera and ballads and 
queer things — all the love songs I 
ever knew, and that one I like about 
the skipper's daughter and the mate. 

. . . ^^A man might sail 
To hell in your companie/' 

And pop! in the middle of them 
something happened. I don't know 
what it was. When I awoke I was 
at home again. The Lord knows 
how I got here. I don't. Does 
Mary? Oh, mamma! 

I wonder if this is the way people 
J3 



The G)nfessions 

feel when they have done some dread- 
ful thing — ^Zike one person before 
the deed and another person after, 
and not able to convince anybody 
else that it isn't the same person at 
all. Mary is very peculiar. I feel 
very strangely and a little seasick, 
as if I had just got off a shipwreck. 



t4 



Of a Husband* 



CHAPTER III. 

Since that evening when I went 
out into the storm without permis- 
sion — ^and heaven knows I could not 
have gone otherwise — Mary has not 
seen fit to speak to me at all. How 
did she ever learn of my duplicity? 
If I meet her at the door she looks 
at me stonily, and if I go into the 
sitting room, where she is reading, 
she lifts her eyes inquisitively, and 
their expression is positively exas- 
perating. 

I never denied that Mary was a 
handsome woman, and melancholy 
becomes her, I'm bound to admit. 
But she has that remote air, as if I 
had been caught stabbing her, and 
nobody knew it but herself and me, 
and she wouldn't tell of me lest I 
be held up to human execration. It 
is a manner quite characteristic of 
Mary. I don't pretend to know how 
the woman does it, but she contrives 
\5 



The Confessions 

to make me feel as if I had commit- 
ted high treason; as if I had got 
entangled in a temperance move- 
ment against my own nature. 

I wish Mary were a man. I told 
her so yesterday, for I got a chance 
when we met in the hall, and I w^as 
going to my office. I spoke to her 
and she stopped to hear what I 
might have to say. She is quite a 
lady, even when I don't choose to be 
quite a gentleman, and I will own 
that no invariable gentleman should 
have come home in the shape I was 
that glorious night. There were oth- 
er places I could have gone. I should 
have had some respect for Mary's 
feelings. 

I hope I have not forgotten that a 
wife has some feelings a husband is 
bound to respect. Some husbands 
do forget, but marriage has not had 
its worst effect on me — ^yet. When 
I told Mary she laughed, laughed 
outright, as if I had amused her 
more than I could be expected to 
understand. But I did understand, 
and I walked out without kissing 
i6 



Of a Husband. 

her goodby. I had not kissed her 
for a week or more and was becom- 
ing accustomed to it. So was she., 
•» « « * « 

Office of Dana Adams. 
My Dear Mrs. Adams: — I have 
spent several hours trying to decide 
whether to notice your treatment 
of me this morning or not. It is 
really unpleasant to be treated that 
way. You put one in such a brutal 
light. As if it were the man's fault 
because lack of practice had made 
him awkward in the use of high- 
balls. I don't wish to be ill-man- 
nered, I'd rather be barbarous, but 
you compel me to say, madam, that 
I disapprove of your methods. Pray, 
do you think I am the kind of hus- 
band who can be browbeaten into 
submission? Perhaps you take me 
for the other sort, that waits to be 
coaxed? Learn that I am neither, 
but believe me to be, sincerely yours, 
Dana Adams. 

P. S. — You refused to listen to 
me, and now you may wonder that 
J7 



The Confessions 

I decline to approve your conduct. 
It seems to me that a woman ought 
to be satisfied with what she can 
get and not make such large de- 
mands that nobody can possibly 
meet them. If I were a woman and 
loved a man as much as all that, I 
would — well, I would do differently. 

D. A. 

Dear Mrs. Adams : — Certainly 
not. Why should I tell you what 
I would do if I were a woman? I 
cannot see that the circumstances 
call for it. Very truly, D. A. 

My Dear Madam : — Your last note 
is disagreeable to me. I must beg 
you to forego any correspondence 
with me on the subject. It is one on 
which it is, and will be forever, im- 
possible for us to agree. 

D. Adams. 



ts 



Of a Husband* 



CHAPTER IV. 

June the Thirteenth. 
If Mary loved me, of course she 
would not, in fact, I perceive that 
she could not, make me so miser- 
able. I think she is the handsomest 
woman when she is unhappy whom 
I ever knew in my life. Possibly 
that is why I do all I can to make 
her unhappy. I like to be quite just 
to people. She has the bewildering: 
beauty of a pagan goddess — M!rs. 
Bacchus, you might think I would 
say, though I shall not — but she has 
the exasperating sensitiveness of a 
modern woman. She has a kind of 
sublimated insolence such as I have 
never met in any other person, and 
when I scorn her for it, I find tha^ 
I admire her for it^ — which is des-' 
picable in me, of course, and I know 
it perfectly. She had the arrogance 
to tell me to-day in so many words 
19 



The Confessions 

that I didn^t understand myself. 
She said — but, I will not write what 
she said. 



20 



Of a Husband* 



CHAPTER V. 

June the Fifteenth, 

Where shall I find a name for the 
thing that has befallen me? It 
seems to me as if there were no name 
for it on earth or in heaven. 

Write it down, Dana Adams — 
fling it into black and white and let 
it stare you out of your senses. See ! 
How do you like the looks of it? 

You have promised your wife that 
you will not drink another highball. 
You have promised — your — WIFE 
— that you will not drink another 
highball. 

I have been trying to recall the 
exact language. Whether I didn't 
say beer, or gin rickeys, or horse- 
necks, or cocktails, or pousse caf^s, 
or whiskey straights, or toddies, or 
hot Scotches, or gin fizzes, or sar- 
saparillas, or ginger ales, or brandy 
smashes, or anything except that one 
dreadful thing. I am afraid I did 
2X 



The G)nfessions * 

say ^^highballs.'* No; now I think 
of it, it was she who said that. All 
I said was "Yes." 

This seems to be a pitiable state of 
mind for a man to be in. I don't re- 
spect it — I really don't. There's a 
part of me that stands off and looks 
on at myself, and keeps quite col- 
lected and sane, and says, "What a 
lunatic that man is!" But the mar- 
iried man in me doesn't mUnd the 
other man a bit, and that is what 
mortifies me so. I am too much 
married. 

I don't think I will write any more 
to-day. I'm ashamed to. I don't 
know what I might say. I'll stop 
and go to work. 

An hour later, 
I can't do it. Now I come to think 
of it I must have been out of my 
mind. I shall have to write and tell 
her so. I wonder if it wasn't sun- 
stroke? I was out on the street 
rather long to-day. They say people 
do such queer things after sunstroke. 

iLofC. 

22 



Of a Husband. 

Seven hours later. 
It is well on toward evening. I 
wish I had been born of those people 
who sleep when things happen— ex- 
cept on the night of the storm; it 
was glorious to be awake then. I 
am writing on and on in this per- 
fectly preposterous way. I am like- 
ly to drown myself in tea and soft 
drinks because I am afraid to wade 
in and dare the highball. Plunge, 
Dana Adams. 

Well, if you've got to write, stop 
writing to yourself and write to her, 
then. I don't believe you could do 
a better thing. Come to think of it, 
she might rather like it, on the 
whole. De gustibus non disputan- 

dum. 

My Dear Mrs. Adams : — It occurs 
to me that a note from me, under the 
circumstances, might be agreeable 
to you ; but now that I am trying to 
write it, I am not sure that I have 
begun it just right. I will send this 
as it stands and try again. 

Faithfully yours, 

Dana Adams. 
23 



The Confessions 

The Second Note, 

Darling: — Will you mind two 
notes from me? I cannot seem to 
find any other way of telling you 
how glad I am that our separation 
is ended. I cannot understand my- 
self. I am quite perplexed. Thou 
strong and tender. Dear, I cannot 
tell you unless I write it, and I feel 
that I must tell you, for I owe it to 
your patience and gentleness to tell 
you what a foolish husband I was. 
I whisper you a secret. He will 
trouble you no more. He has floated 
out upon the tide of love, 

Beyond the utmost purple riniy 
And highballs note are not for him, 

I am, 

Dana, Your Husband. 

The Third Note. 

Oh, teach me how to make you 
happy. I have everything to learn, 
I know. You see I was never a hus- 
band before, and I wasn't a mem- 
ber of the Sisterhood of Sociologic 
24 



Of a Husband. 

Progress as you were. But believe 
me that I care for nothing else — for 
nothing in the world except your 
happiness. I will be the most docile 
and the gladdest husband you ever 
had. 

See, I have almost written this 
first separation away. I will con- 
fess; if I had not written I would 
have exploded. I will be home in 
half an hour. 

Don't be jealous, dear, but I have 
just taken a couple of highballs in 
celebration of our reunion. Waking 
and sleeping I dream, and all my 
dreams are of you. Your frown is 
my exile. Your smile is my Eden. 
Your arms are my heaven. I'll get 
a couple more highballs on the way 
home. Your Dana. 

P. S. — Don't keep dinne^ waiting 
for me. - D 



25 



JUN 22 1903 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



020 994 547 2 



